


Faultlines

by WinterWitchcraft



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Trailer, Friendship, Gen, Grieving Steve Rogers, Poignant, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Sad with a Happy Ending, Steve Rogers Has PTSD, Thor (Marvel) is a Good Bro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-27
Updated: 2019-02-27
Packaged: 2019-11-06 16:27:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17943194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WinterWitchcraft/pseuds/WinterWitchcraft
Summary: After the Decimation, the world changed. Steve Rogers changed. He is a man without a mission, a soldier without a shield, a hero without a hope. Finding his footing in this changed time requires the greatest act of braveries. How do you start again?





	Faultlines

Sand floods through his fingers into the bowl. It plies thin trickles onto an irregular heap, a tiny mountain range defined by its gently rounded domes and wandering slopes. The fine grit scours his calloused fingertips and sticks to his skin. 

"Thirty seconds remaining." The cheery voice on his phone announces the countdown. He grimaces. 

"Thank you, Harmony," Steve says. 

Another scooped up handful rests in a mound on his palm. He swallows back the bile and squeezes his fingers shut involuntarily. Compressed sand bites into his flesh. There's an honest kind of physical pain there, weak and diminished, no effect for a man able to heal the abuses of violence and life itself too fast. 

He barely notices the table shaking against his leg and the bowl juddering all the way to the edge. The collision with the cheap glazed ceramic and the tiled floor jars him from a moment of losing himself. "The fugue," his psychologist calls it. "PTSD-like symptoms." 

Steve manages to slap the phone flat before it crashes off the canted tabletop. The horrific cracking noise announces itself, an exclamation point that forces him to recoil. Too late. He rarely used to forget himself before, always mindful and assured of his physical strength. That's been gone for months now. 

Tempered glass falls away from spiderweb cracks. He presses his lips together seeing the damage done. Another couple hundred bucks gone. SHIELD would have taken care of it once. He can expense the cost, of course. Pepper will sign off, he will countersign, and they will pretend it's all well. He shoves aside the broken device to wait until morning. 

A cold shower takes five minutes, ten if he stretches it. Shaving, no more an issue. Basic grooming over, he might pull another ten out of dressing himself. A man can only clean up his spotless, nearly empty bedroom so many times in the day. Rearranging the pitiful library of manuals and books, mostly for his motorcycle, takes no more than ten minutes. He leaves the tiny nook serving as his office and emerges into the dormitory-like confines. The bed lies under an accusing sliver of light percolating through slits in the curtains.   
Its perfectly made cover and pillows shine pure and white. His stomach revolts again. It's almost impossible to be sick, he knows this mentally. 

Emotionally is another matter, and he plunges his knuckles into his side. At least there he can assault the pain with blunt force against a wall of muscle. 

The corridor proves empty when he follows on autopilot through the cavernous upstate facility. It lacks a heart, the usual bustle of people such a large government-run place deserved. Once upon a time, the upstate headquarters boasted a staff of one hundred, twice that in auxiliaries coming in and out. No more, and it shows, the shadows deeper and the empty standard federal grey rooms echoing with the leaden weight of silence. 

He turns away from the long avenue to the mess, though it claims the title dining room on a standard plaque. The first door out leaves him in the cool air of a March morning, moisture thick and cloying after living in the climate controlled environment of his room. The parameters set up years ago treat him like a museum artifact to be preserved. 

"Still awake?" Thor's voice hits like a slap to the cheek.   
Steve stares at the big Asgardian staring up at the sky, pocked by a few stars and thick clouds. "I never saw them so clearly from Brooklyn. Wish I'd known how much better the view is." 

Thor nods. Merely that, no cocky smirk or quip about mankind barely reaching for the nearest moon, let alone the distant expanses of space his people conquered thousands of years ago. 

"Supposed to be some kind of blood moon," Steve says. He gestures numbly at the horizon. 

"The super wolf blood moon." The name is absurd but spoken with the stentorian tones of an orator, the Asgardian gives the title polish. Too much. "An ill omen." 

"Wasn't there a story about an evil wolf?" 

"Fenrir. Dead now, thanks to my brother and Doctor Banner."

Steve swivels sharply and stares at Thor, looming there in the shadows, harmless as an automatic pistol lying in the open. His jaw tenses and falls open, finally.   
"What? You never said anything about Fenrir. The famous wolf meant to end the world."

"Rather foretold that, didn't he? I thought we foiled that moldering bag of bones. Ha, how clever is the Prince of Asgard." Thor shakes his head. 

"Forgive me for being a bit blunt, but when were you planning on telling us about this?" 

"The time has never been right, Rogers. Consider it water under the Bifrost, as you say." 

"The bridge." Correction comes spontaneously. "Sorry, that was uncalled for." 

"No explanation needed." Thor holds up his hand. "A grand tale for another time, another age. I warned you we handled some business of Asgard. The tree and the rabbit and I. It merely involved the doctor a little earlier." 

"He said you dropped him off. Literally you meant the sky?" Steve's eyes narrow slightly. The taste of bile in his mouth thickens into an acidic stew that swallowing hardly helps. "I questioned him about it. There was nothing about you and him dealing with a mythical wolf. Your Highness, I prefer a little transparency when we can afford it."

Thor shrugs his massive shoulders. "You had transparency just now, as you say. His contribution was noted. I failed to spare Asgard its fate as a place, and we encountered Thanos shortly after. The tale as I told you about finding Bruce and bringing him once more to Midgard was adequate." 

"Adequate? We tend to call that a halfway decent meal that costs too much." 

"A difference of perspective."

Steve grinds his teeth slightly. His hand flexs again into another fist, allowing for the deep dismay to build. The Avengers cannot afford a fight. They dance around one another like frightened ghosts in a churchyard, refusing to stir one another up. The accepted price of survival, the burden of shame, is one they all agree to. 

"You're right. Maybe one day, you can tell me." 

A hint of the old, laughing crown prince shows in those edged cheekbones, the hint of a ready grin. Diminished so much from its peak, replaced by something so grave and burdened, no one can much name what it is. Thor nods his assent like a king of old dismissing an advisor. 

And really, that's what they are in a way. He is a king and Steve, Steve is just a man. A citizen in a broken country. Not even a soldier, not any more. What he is, he can hardly say. 

He swivels on his heel and heads deeper into the grounds, gravel crunching underfoot. The windows reflect the stoop to his spine the fall to his shoulders, a shape he never knew to take on. He carries himself differently now. 

A quick check of his watch marks the twenty minutes spent fruitlessly; twenty minutes closer to a dawn he cannot find reason to care about. Twenty minutes closer to the next hopeless support meeting. 

Ozone dances on the air. His hair lifts at his nape in a prickling shiver. When he turns, all he can see is lightning and living skyfire pouring from the heavens, and no sign of Thor. The Bifrost leaves its singed mark on the ground. 

Thor can run. But Steve, bound to time and place, has no such choice. He starts to jog, blindly striking out, and once he starts, he can't stop.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to explore Steve's weakness and sorrows, and the hints of the "end of the world" was still happening buried throughout Thor: Ragnarok that led into Infinity War. Of course, this is all from retrospect, so the brilliant plans are clear now.


End file.
